Unitarian Universalist Church of Lancaster

Currently Reading Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal By Rachel Naomi Remen see related

"At the heart of any real intimacy is a certain vulnerability.�It is hard to trust someone with your vulnerability unless you can see in them a matching vulnerability and know that you will not be judged. In some basic way it is our imperfections and even our pain that draws others close to us."

"All lives touch many others. Sometimes this network is very large, sometimes small, but somewhere in it a certain quality of love is needed if we are to be able to survive. It is not a question of numbers. Sometimes it can be given by only one person. For one man, the child of an abusive and alcoholic family, it was his dog."

"When you are walking on thin ice, you might as well dance."

"The less we are attached to life, the more alive we can become. The less we have preferences about life, the more deeply we can experience and participate in life. Embracing life may be more about tasting than it is about either raisin toast or blueberry muffins."

"Anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed."

"There is no ending without�a beginning. Beginnings and endings are always right up against each other. Nothing ever ends without something beginning or begins without something else ending."

"Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal."

"Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone."

"Fear is the friction in all transitions."

"Suffering -- whether physical, emotional, spiritual, or as often the case, all three -- can be a doorway to transformation."

"Approval can't be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it."

"The things [you] once believed to be [your] shortcomings [can turn] out in the long run to be [your] strengths, and other things of which [you were] unduly proud [can reveal] themselves in the end to be among your shortcomings."

"Perfectionism is so widespread in this culture that we actually have had to invent another word for love --�unconditional love."

"A belief is like a pair of sunglasses. When we wear a belief and look at life through it, it is difficult to convince ourselves that what we see is not what is real. With our sunglasses on, life looks green to us. Knowing what is real requires that we remember that we are wearing glasses, and take them off. One of the greatest moments in life is the moment we recognize we have them on in the first place."

"It seems that life drops many bags of gold in our path. Rarely do they look like what they are."